‘Malverde no me ha fallado’: iglesias y narcotráfico
Seminario de Intersecciones de lo Religioso — V Ciclo de conversatorios
“Malverde no me ha fallado”: iglesias y narcotráfico
Seminario de Intersecciones de lo Religioso — V Ciclo de conversatorios “Si Dios quiere… repensando el fenómeno religioso” November 25, 2021 · Mexico · Live-streamed Photo: AFP / Getty Images
El Santo que el Estado no Reconoce
Jesús Malverde — the bandit-turned-saint venerated in a chapel on Insurgentes Avenue in Culiacán, Sinaloa — is the axis of this academic panel from the Seminario de Intersecciones de lo Religioso’s fifth cycle. The conversatorio examines how popular religiosity embedded in narcotrafficking culture is not marginal superstition but a functioning moral and communal framework: a way of organizing loyalty, legitimizing violence, distributing charity, and narrating suffering within communities where the formal state is either absent or predatory.
The title comes from field testimony: “Malverde no me ha fallado” — a phrase researchers heard from practitioners of the devotion, describing a saint who delivers protection that the police, the government, and the church do not. Roa situates this in the broader question of why criminal organizations invest so heavily in religious and communal ties — and what the devotional infrastructure of groups like the Sinaloa Cartel reveals about their governance ambitions beyond drug trafficking.
Narco-Religiosity as Governance
The panel’s analytical core is the question of legitimacy. Criminal organizations that sustain chapels, fund local saints’ day festivals, build schools, and distribute food during crises are not simply buying silence — they are building the moral architecture of alternative sovereignty. Co-panelist María Laura Anaya (El Colegio de México) brings the anthropological frame: popular religiosity among cartel-adjacent communities is frequently the only institution that holds across the violence. Roa connects this to the CIDE mapping work: the territories with the highest cartel-group density are often also the territories with the strongest narco-religious presence — because in the absence of the state, both fill the same structural vacuum.
Citation
Roa, J., Anaya, M. L., & Villanueva, E. (Moderator). (2021, November 25). “Malverde no me ha fallado”: iglesias y narcotráfico [Panel discussion]. V Ciclo de conversatorios “Si Dios quiere… repensando el fenómeno religioso”, Seminario de Intersecciones de lo Religioso.